"As just one example, how many "well bred, lightly raced horses from top barns" will be prices? "

Coin Silver, Flower Alley, and Bandini paid pretty good prices this spring if you understood their ability/potential and the flaws in some of their competitors.

I cashed on Coin Silver in the Lexington.

Flower Alley was my second choice behind Texcess in the Lanes End. I actually had a ticket on him punched, but pulled it at the last second. That was a betting error, but not an error in understanding his chances of winning.

Realizing that Bandini was very likely to improve in the Blue Grass kept me off a bunch of underlays in the race that others seemed to like so much.

It's not JUST about finding a big price to cash.

It's also about understanding the actual chances of various horses to win. If you underrate certain horses, you will overrate others and bet them as underlays. If you hate the favorite, you might bet the wrong horse against him.

"The whole point of TG is to bet on the horse that looks best on TG!"

The whole point of using TG or any other set of speed figures is to have an objective measurement of ability/performance.

Despite the fact that the classing system is relatively efficient (meaning that higher class designations tend to contain better/faster horses), there are many uses of speed figures.

IMO...

They are especially useful in evaluating lightly raced limited winners because there's often a wide range of ability within the same class. Those races contain horses that will go on to be stakes champions and others that are destined for the claiming ranks.

They are very useful when the 3YOs start running against older horses for the first time because various crops are stronger or weaker than others.

They are very useful for comparing horses racing in different parts of the country at the same class designation.

Etc....



Post Edited (06-02-05 09:24)